Valve announces Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is planned for release on August 21st for Windows, OS X, PlayStation Network, and Xbox LIVE Arcade at the same price of $15.00 across the board:

Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS: GO) is targeted for release on August 21, 2012.

To be available via the Playstation Network, Xbox Live Arcade, and Steam (for PC and Mac), CS: GO will expand upon the team-based action gameplay pioneered when Counter-Strike was launched almost 13 years ago (CS beta 1, August 1999).

PHJF wrote on Jun 5, 2012, 02:03:That's why it was met by a resounding "meh" from people like me who had already played thousands of hours of CS and were looking for something actually new.

How'd I miss this? I'm people like that! I think it's great and gets a "yay". I don't want something drastically different. Did you have similar complaints about the Quake series?

Thousands of hours of everything is up on YouTube so even if you're not in the beta it's no mystery. Do you like CS and want to play an updated version with new official game modes, many new weapons, new maps, new graphics, new aim/recoil/gunplay/netcode, a separation between competitive and casual, updated better bots, "ranks", stats, and new achievements? Sorry it's still CS.

In terms of leaps I'd say it's roughly equal to the change from 1.6 to Source.

CSS was nothing but a graphical update to 1.6. That's why it was met by a resounding "meh" from people like me who had already played thousands of hours of CS and were looking for something actually new.

So perhaps CSGO will end up being the *third* time we get another CS rehash instead of a proper follow up. de_dust just won't fucking die.

Proudfoot wrote on Jun 4, 2012, 21:42:Bah. Some of us are old. We remember when peopled played -the game- and didn't play -the leaderboard-.

You're confused... The oldest FPS players played for nothing else but that #1 spot.

If you mean old CS players... Yes I suppose so, but now like other modern FPS completing objectives increases your score (separate from frags). Even in old CS you'd still want to get a win for your team and top frag.

This damn bot discussion needs to die... The game has bots, good ones too! There's an option right on the main menu literally labeled "PLAY OFFLINE WITH BOTS".

I dunno about that... In terms of leaps I'd say it's roughly equal to the change from 1.6 to Source. Even though it's the same engine they've redone the weapons from the ground up and greatly improved the netcode/registration (for lack of better technical insight).

CS2 isn't coming... They'd have to call it something different if they wanted to make a leap that big without alienating a majority of the current players. CoD releases a new game every year and really hasn't changed much since MW4 whereas CS has 3 major versions in roughly a decade running concurrently and each have their own distinct feel while still remaining CS. Had we gone from CS 1.6 to CS:GO nobody would have a problem with calling it CS2.

Bah. Some of us are old. We remember when peopled played -the game- and didn't play -the leaderboard-.

Most of the online shooter community is either using a controller ... *cough* or is only interested in being the highest frag count.

Adding bots in allows a lot more people to enjoy a game while giving the option of having other players at the same time. I don't see a downside, unless the bots are hacked Reaperbots who always knew where you were at all times... (UT bots were the best, you could actually sneak up on them.)

Get a grip people of Blues News. There is an anouncement on a release date of the #1 online shooter of all times and all you guys cry about it friggin BOTS!!! This is an online shooter for crying out loud!"

theglaze wrote on Jun 4, 2012, 16:32:The way bots work in the beta is that they are controllable by a person after death.

Example, you die during a rush and when spectating a bot on your team, you hit your use button and then take over that point right there and then, assuming it's health, weapon, position, etc. Any kills/weapons/money you get go towards the bot, not you.

I imagine this is a necessity because it would be awfully frustrating to watch bots attempt to kill each other if it came down to bot vs bot to decide the round. This also means there is no disruption during the game if people leave as they are replaced by bots.

As for their style or intelligence, there's some room for improvement. It's frustrating to watch a bot walk backwards through a set of doors, while carrying the bomb, and straight into the enemies defensive position.

I have never heard of any of this and it sounds pretty wild. May only work that way in regular CS... Haven't seen that in the Arsenal modes.

edit more on bots:These are honestly some of the best bots (in terms of AI not just skill/lethality) I've seen. A lot of my play style is meant to confuse human players... You can't confuse bots so I find them tough to play against. For example, if I'm rushing the enemy spawn and make it there a bot will shoot me from my side of the map to his, most players wouldn't do that. Or if you take a rarely used route that obviously doesn't surprise a bot.

I haven't played vanilla CS yet (Casual and Competitive in GO) I've only played a tiny bit of Destruction (a new de_ infused GG) and metric shit ton of Arms Race (GG DM). I win over 80% of Arms Race maps.

The bots are adaptive based on your skill (seems to go off of KDR). If I get knife very quickly on Arms Race (therefore have a good KDR) the next map the bots will be at hacks level. Other times I enter a game full of bad players and the bots will be terrible... It's pretty neat.

As far as my overall impressions go... I like it a lot, it's an improvement in graphics and (IMO) an improvement in shot registration and aiming mechanics. They added 2 new shotguns, 2 new pistols, a new sub, a new rifle, a new machine gun and a molotov. Love the new radar, the inclusions of GG as two official modes, and all the new built in commmunity/stats features.

In the end though it's still CS, if you like CS you'll probably like it (unless you want to nitpick, waaaah they ruined CS!) but if you don't like CS you likely won't change your mind for GO.

PHJF wrote on Jun 4, 2012, 16:02:The best bot has always been a worse player than the worst human (excluding the odd random five-year-olds). The only game with bots that even RESEMBLED human players was UT.

I was going to post the same thing. I've played against plenty of bots over the years - especially with the Quake 2, Half-Life and Counter-Strike - and the only bots I ever enjoyed playing against were those in the UT series. Sure they fell apart during the more elaborate game modes like Assault but for the most part they did a good job at a time when net connections simply weren't what they are now. Heck, I remember downloading the UT demo on a 56k modem and being incredibly thankful it had the new fangled resume-the-download-if-it-stops feature.

It really is a shame that while graphics seem to continually get better AI / bots continue to be incredibly hit-and-miss. RAGE was incredibly scripted, which is weird considering how decent the Q3 bots were for the time - they simply haven't progressed at the same speed as other technologies. That said, I'd never play Counter-Strike for bots and it annoyed me in Counter-Strike: Source that it was initially very hard to separate games out that had them.

The way bots work in the beta is that they are controllable by a person after death.

Example, you die during a rush and when spectating a bot on your team, you hit your use button and then take over that point right there and then, assuming it's health, weapon, position, etc. Any kills/weapons/money you get go towards the bot, not you.

I imagine this is a necessity because it would be awfully frustrating to watch bots attempt to kill each other if it came down to bot vs bot to decide the round. This also means there is no disruption during the game if people leave as they are replaced by bots.

As for their style or intelligence, there's some room for improvement. It's frustrating to watch a bot walk backwards through a set of doors, while carrying the bomb, and straight into the enemies defensive position.

The best bot has always been a worse player than the worst human (excluding the odd random five-year-olds). The only game with bots that even RESEMBLED human players was UT.

Bots are important. Whne you get sick of the tards and the hax at least you can play with them.

So your solution to players that hack (which is easily remedied by playing someplace with admins) is to... play against aimBOTS. Seeing as how strongly CS is marketed as a competitive, team-based shooter, I doubt they'd lose so much as 1% of sales by not including bots. I mean the game is already $15 which has me wondering something fierce about the quality/quantity of content it is offering.

my next question is, are the bots hard coded into the game engine for specific maps, or can mappers use entities to script bot behavior and objectives. would be cool to have maps define the bot AI. could have an entity for where a bot would stand to then shoot a grenade for that grenade to land at a specific spot(using another entity), etc. in the map editor.

edit: maybe that's asking too much. i guess that'll be CS: GO2 ? at that point, perhaps we could have an overlay system, where people create layouts of the bot AI entities, and these overlays can be downloaded and selected from the in-game menu for whichever bot AI template you prefer for map. woah, that sounds big.

Hardcoded behavior, right down to where grenades land?

There's been a battle between hardcoded bots (not to the extent you mentioned, which seems very predictable) and adaptive bots since the ReaperBot days. I prefer adaptive, as you can't figure out what they're probably going to do by opening up a map editor, but inevitably they're dumber (though less predictably so.)

The best are slightly scripted dynamic bots (which are still technically static), that get signals from areas of maps but don't have any kind of hardcoded routine or path. Q3 did this.

The only real way bots scale in difficulty is via accuracy, response time and, in some cases, lethality, so bots are never a true replacement for humans. I often prefer them, though, as they're quiet, not influenced by network connections and can be set to a point just below my skill level so that I feel challenged yet am more or less guaranteed to dominate.

my next question is, are the bots hard coded into the game engine for specific maps, or can mappers use entities to script bot behavior and objectives. would be cool to have maps define the bot AI. could have an entity for where a bot would stand to then shoot a grenade for that grenade to land at a specific spot(using another entity), etc. in the map editor.

edit: maybe that's asking too much. i guess that'll be CS: GO2 ? at that point, perhaps we could have an overlay system, where people create layouts of the bot AI entities, and these overlays can be downloaded and selected from the in-game menu for whichever bot AI template you prefer for map. woah, that sounds big.